The most notable result of the change appears to be that it has bounced CNN (525 million visits) ahead of The New York Times (385.7 million) to retake the top spot on the Sweden Casino traffic ranking. Year-on-year, however, the fastest growth was at sports publisher Athlon Sports, which has been the case among the US top 50 every month since May. Further down the rankings The Daily Beast was the highest debuting publication, entering the top 50 at 39th place after seeing traffic rise 22% month-on-month to 30 million. Mail Online remained steady at ninth place with 122.2 million visits while Google News (120.8 million) jumped three places to tenth despite losing 4% of traffic month-on-month, displacing Newsweek (115.7 million) from the top ten. But in August People.com (162.6 million visits) and Yahoo Finance (162.8 million) were the only top ten sites to continue growing their traffic, by 3% and 2% respectively.
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In August eight of the top ten publishers saw month-on-month decline, which marked a correction after an eventful July (in which the Paris Olympics kicked off, Joe Biden left the US presidential race and Donald Trump was shot). The Fox web traffic decline contrasts with the network’s reported surge in TV viewership around the election. People.com, the website of People magazine, saw the largest fall among the top ten, losing 10% of its audience compared with October.
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Celebrity news website People and the BBC were the only sites in the USA top ten to post year-on-year traffic growth. The biggest decline among the top ten were at MSN, down 28% year on year and 8% month on month to 168 million visits. The biggest increases were at The New York Times (up 9% year on year to 474.5 million visits) and CNN (up 14% month on month to 356.7 million). Many of the biggest news websites in the US moved back into growth in June, according to the latest data from Similarweb. The biggest decline in the top ten was at syndication website MSN, down 10% month on month and 38% year on year to 145.2 million visits in fifth place.
- Men’s Journal was the fastest growing top-50 news website in the US in May, quadrupling its traffic compared to the same month a year earlier.
- The Atlantic saw a jump of more than 40% month on month amid its blockbuster story published on 24 March revealing its editor had been accidentally added to a Trump administration group chat about military strikes in Yemen.
- Visits to the climate-specialised newsbrand were up 25% month-on-month and 421% year-on-year (30.4 million visits).
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The UK-based Sun was the fastest faller, down 59% year on year to 23 million visits per month, according to Similarweb estimates. The biggest year-on-year increases were at The Arena Group’s Men’s Journal, up 309% compared to June 2024 to 25.1 million visits, and Substack, up 57% to 73.9 million visits. The biggest month-on-month increase in June was at The Times of Israel, which saw its visits almost double to 23.7 million in the US (up 98%). The other newsbrands to report month-on-month growth were Newsbreak (up 6%), SFGate (4%), USA Today (3%), and LA Times and India Times (both 1%). Similarly six sites reported month-on-month growth for August, with this hugely increasing to 35 in September.
The Independent is one of several UK newsbrands along with The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Express and the BBC that have recently put focus on expansion in the US. The Daily Mail remained the best-ranked British newsbrand in the ranking (107.7 million visits) in tenth, one place ahead of the BBC (101 million). UK newsbrand The Independent (25.7 million, up 44%) also made the top ten for growth, ranking 39th in the top 50. Newsweek was the fastest-growing news site in the US in February while climate news startup The Cooldown entered the list in 42nd position, according to Press Gazette’s latest ranking.
The only sites to see visits decline month-on-month were the US website of the UK’s The Sun newspaper (37.1 million) and Athlon Sports (27.5 million), which both dropped 3%. All of the top-ten most-visited news sites in the US saw traffic growth when compared with June, according to figures from digital intelligence platform Similarweb. Among the top ten news sites by US traffic People magazine again saw the most year-on-year growth in August, having also been the fastest annual growers in April, May and June.
